There are tons of free themes available for WordPress, and there are plenty of premium themes too, but each theme comes with its own set of features. Some of these features are incredibly useful, some seem to be wasteful, and some can be duplicated with plugins, but what’s your favorite theme feature?

I’m partial myself to themes which are responsive in design, like Twenty Eleven, meaning that they are built to adapt to any screen size (even mobile devices). So, what theme features do you look for when selecting your theme?

Comments

I look for themes that have minimal features, because I generally want to create child themes for my sites. I try to avoid themes that boast a lengthy list of items that can be done in the admin screens, because that usually means extra work tracking down the specific things I might want to change in a child theme.

I like adaptability of themes to multiple screens apart from 2011, yoko is another special theme with such feature.
Features apart typography and simplicity is very important to me. That’s why I still keep using Fresh theme, a design by bartelme ported by iLemoned to wordpress. It hasn’t been updated for almost three years. I fell in love so much that I paid a designer to update it to latest wp features.

a theme is crap without draggable sidebar items. Doesn’t necessarily have to be brothercakes drag and drop javascript per se, it could be CSS it doesn’t matter, but I like those draggable sidebar items. I wouldn’t even consider putting a theme on my blog without them period!

My favorite feature or the most sought after items is consistent with Adwords to monetize effectively. There are some issues where it is very bright but very difficult to add advertising without making it look bad.

About the Author

James

James began using WordPress in 2004. Being new to WordPress (and blogging in general), he quickly found the WordPress Support Forums and basically never left. James currently resides in sunny Southern California, where he enjoys bringing happiness to millions of WordPress.com users.